Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in
Collision

Reading something they can understand, that seems to
make sense, that presents itself as technically competent, non-scientists are easily
gulled by fake science.
--Henry H. Bauer

The less one knows about science, the
more plausible Velikovsky's scenario appears.... --Leroy
Ellenberger

I would not trust any alleged
citation by Velikovsky without checking the original printed sources.
-- Michael Friedlander

In 1950, Macmillan Company published Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, a book which
asserts, among many other things, that the planet
Venus did not exist until
recently. Some 3500 years ago in the guise of a gigantic comet, it grazed
Earth a couple of times, after having been ejected from the planet Jupiter
some indefinite time earlier, before settling into its current orbit.
Velikovsky (1895-1979), a psychiatrist by training, did not base his claims on
astronomical evidence and scientific inference or argument. Instead, he
argued on the basis of ancient cosmological myths from places as disparate
as India and China, Greece and Rome, Assyria and Sumer. For example, ancient Greek
mythology asserts that the goddess Athena sprang from the head of Zeus.
Velikovsky identifies Athena with the planet Venus, though the Greeks
didn't. The Greek counterpart of the Roman Venus was Aphrodite. Velikovsky
identifies Zeus (whose Roman counterpart was the god Jupiter) with the planet Jupiter. This myth, along with others from ancient Egypt, Israel, Mexico, etc., are used to support the claim that "Venus was
expelled as a comet and then changed to a planet after contact with a number of members of
our solar system" (Velikovsky 1972,182).

Furthermore, Velikovsky then uses his Venus-the-comet claim to explain several events
reported in the Old Testament as well as to tie together a number of ancient stories about
flies. For example,

Under the weight of many arguments, I came to the conclusion--about which I no
longer have any doubt--that it was the planet Venus, at the time still a comet, that
caused the catastrophe of the days of Exodus (181).

When Venus sprang out of Jupiter as a comet and flew very close to the earth, it
became entangled in the embrace of the earth. The internal heat developed by the earth and
the scorching gases of the comet were in themselves sufficient to make the vermin of the
earth propagate at a very feverish rate. Some of the plagues [mentioned in Exodus] like
the plague of the frogs...or of the locusts, must be ascribed to such
causes (192).

The question arises here whether or not the comet Venus infested the earth with
vermin which it may have carried in its trailing atmosphere in the form of larvae together
with stones and gases. It is significant that all around the world people have associated
the planet Venus with flies (193).

The ability of many small insects and their larvae to endure great cold and heat and
to live in an atmosphere devoid of oxygen renders not entirely improbable the hypothesis
that Venus (and also Jupiter, from which Venus sprang) may be populated by
vermin (195).

Who can deny that vermin have extraordinary survival skills? But the cosmic
hitchhikers Velikovsky speaks of are in a class all of their own. How much energy would have been
needed to expel a "comet" the size of Venus and how hot must Venus have been to
have only cooled down to its current surface temperature of 750 Kelvin during the
last 3,500 years? What evidence is there that any locust larvae could
survive such temperatures? To ask such questions would be to engage in scientific discussion, but
one will find very little of that sort of discussion in Worlds in Collision. What
one finds instead are exercises in comparative mythology, philology, and theology, which
together make up Velikovsky's planetology. That is not to say that his work is not an
impressive exercise and demonstration of ingenuity and erudition. It is very impressive,
but it isn't science. It isn't even history.

What Velikovsky does isn't science because he does not start with what is known and
then use ancient myths to illustrate or illuminate what has been discovered.
Instead, he is indifferent to the established beliefs of astronomers and
physicists, and seems to assume that someday they will find the evidence to
support his ideas. He seems to take it for granted that the
claims of ancient myths should be used to support or challenge the claims of modern
astronomy and cosmology. In short, like the creationists in
their arguments against evolution, he starts with the assumption that the Bible is a
foundation and guide for scientific truth. Where the views of modern astrophysicists or
astronomers conflict with certain passages of the Old Testament, the moderns are assumed
to be wrong. Velikovsky, however, goes much further than the creationists in his faith;
for Velikovsky has faith in all ancient myths, legends, and folk tales. Because of
his uncritical and selective acceptance of ancient myths, he cannot be said to be doing
history, either. Where myths can be favorably interpreted to fit his hypothesis, he does
not fail to cite them. The contradictions of ancient myths regarding the origin of the
cosmos, the people, etc. are trivialized. If a myth fits his hypotheses, he accepts it and
interprets it to his liking. Where the myth doesn't fit, he ignores it. In short, he seems
to make no distinction between myth, legends, and history. Myths may have to
be interpreted but Velikovsky treats them as presenting historical facts. If
a myth conflicts with a scientific law of nature, the law must be revised.

If, occasionally, historical evidence does not square with formulated laws, it
should be remembered that a law is but a deduction from experience and experiment, and
therefore laws must conform with historical facts, not facts with laws
(11).

One of the characteristics of a reasonable explanation is that it be a likely story. To
be reasonable, it is not enough that an explanation simply be a possible account of
phenomena. It has to be a likely account. To be likely, an account usually must be in
accordance with current knowledge and beliefs, with the laws and principles of the field
in which the explanation is made. An explanation of how two chemicals interact, for
example, would be unreasonable if it violated basic principles in chemistry. Those
principles, while not infallible, have not been developed lightly, but after generations
of testing, observations, refutations, more testing, more observations, etc. To go against
the established principles of a field puts a great burden of proof on the one who goes
against those principles. This is true in all fields which have sets of established
principles and laws. The novel theory, hypothesis, explanation, etc., which is
inconsistent with already established principles and accepted theories, has the burden of
proof. The proponent of the novel idea must provide very good reasons for rejecting
established principles. This is not because the established views are considered
infallible; it is because this is the only reasonable way to proceed. Even if the
established theory is eventually shown to be false and the upstart theory eventually takes
its place as current dogma, it would still have been unreasonable to have rejected the old
theory and accepted the new one in the absence of any compelling reason to do so.

the scientific community's response to Velikovsky

Velikovsky was bitterly opposed by the vast majority of the scientific
community, but the opposition may have been elicited mainly because of his
popularity with "the New York literati" (Sagan 1979, 83). It is doubtful
that many scientists even read Velikovsky, or read very much of Worlds in
Collision. A knowledgeable astronomer and physicist would recognize
after a few pages that the work is pseudoscientific
twaddle. But the New York literary world considered Velikovsky a genius on
par with "Einstein, Newton, Darwin and Freud" (Sagan, ibid.). To the
scientific world it might be more accurate to say he was a genius on par
with L. Ron Hubbard. A number of scientists even
threatened to boycott Macmillan's textbook division as a sign of their
disgust that such twaddle should be published with such fanfare, as if the
author were a great scientist. According to Leroy Ellenberger, "when the
heat was applied by professors who were returning Macmillan textbooks
unopened in protest and declining to edit new textbooks Macmillan gave the
book over to Doubleday, which had no textbook division."

Velikovsky is certainly ingenious. His explanations of parallels among
ancient myths are very entertaining, interesting and apparently plausible.
His explanation of
universal collective amnesia of these worlds in collision is highly amusing
and equally improbable.
Imagine we're on earth 3,500 years ago when an object about the same size as our planet is
coming at us from outer space! It whacks us a couple of times, spins our planet around so
that its rotation stops and starts again, creates great heat and upheavals from within the
planet and yet the most anyone can remember about these catastrophes are things like
"....and the sun stood still" [Joshua 10: 12-13] and other stories of
darkness, storms, upheavals, plagues, floods, snakes and bulls in the sky, etc. No one in
ancient times mentions an object the size of earth colliding with us. You'd think someone
amongst these ancient peoples, who all loved to tell stories, would have told their
grandchildren about it. Someone would have passed it on. But no one on earth seems to
remember such an event.

Velikovsky explains why our ancestors did not record these events as they occurred in a
chapter entitled "A Collective Amnesia." He reverts to the old
Freudian notion of repressed memory and neurosis. These events were just too traumatic and
horrible to bear, so we all buried the memory of them deep in our
subconscious minds. Our
ancient myths are neurotic expressions of memories and dreams based on real experiences.

The task I had to accomplish was not unlike that faced by a psychoanalyst who, out
of disassociated memories and dreams, reconstructs a forgotten traumatic experience in the
early life of an individual. In an analytical experiment on mankind, historical
inscriptions and legendary motifs often play the same role as recollections (infantile
memories) and dreams in the analysis of a personality (12).

The typically unscientific theories and fanciful explanations of psychoanalysis
seem even less credible when applied to the entire population, yet to the
New York literati, in love as they were with all things Freudian,
speculations such as these guaranteed one's genius.

It is not surprising that when one thumbs through any recent scientific book on
cosmology, no mention is made of Velikovsky or his theories. His disciples blame this
treatment of their hero as proof of a conspiracy in the scientific community to suppress
ideas which oppose their own. Even now, more than fifty years later, after
all of his major claims have been rejected or refuted, Velikovsky still
has his disciples who claim he is not being given credit for getting at
least some things right. However, it does not appear that he got anything
of importance right. For example, there is no evidence on earth of a
catastrophe occurring around 1500 B.C.E. Former Velikovsky disciple Leroy
Ellenberger notes that

the Terminal Cretaceous Event 65 million years
ago, whatever it was, left unambiguous worldwide signatures of iridium and
soot. The catastrophes Velikovsky conjectured within the past 3500 years
left no similar signatures according to Greenland ice cores, bristlecone
pine rings, Swedish clay varves, and ocean sediments. All provide
accurately datable sequences covering the relevant period and preserve no
signs of having experienced a Velikovskian catastrophe.*

Current disciples think Velikovsky should get credit for anticipating
catastrophism of the type that ended the reign of the dinosaurs some 65
million years ago. Critic David Morrison thinks otherwise.

Velikovsky focuses narrowly on encounters
between the Earth and planets -- Mars and Venus. While he refers to Venus
being accompanied by debris, the dominant agents of his catastrophes are
tidal, chemical, and electrical interactions between planets, not
meteoritic impacts. Remarkably, Velikovsky did not even accept (let alone
predict) that the lunar craters are the result of impacts -- rather, he
ascribed them to lava "bubbles" and to electric discharges. I see nothing
in his vision that relates to our current understanding of interplanetary
debris and the role of impacts in geological and biological evolution. I
conclude that Velikovsky was fundamentally wrong in both his vision of
planetary collisions (or near collisions) and in his failure to recognize
the role of smaller impacts and collisions in solar system history.

If anything, says Morrison, "Velikovsky with his crazy ideas tainted
catastrophism and discouraged young scientists from pursuing anything that
might be associated even vaguely with him" (Morrison 2001, 70). Morrison
polled 25 leading contemporary scientists who have played a significant
role in the development of the "new catastrophism" and not one thought
that Velikovsky had had any significant positive influence on "the
acceptance of catastrophist ideas in Earth and planetary science over the
past half-century." Nine thought he had had a negative influence
(Morrison, ibid.).

Morrison points out several other misleading claims about Velikovsky
being right. For example, Velikovsky was right that Venus is hot but wrong
in how he came to that conclusion. He thought it was because Venus is a
recent planet violently ejected from Jupiter and having traveled close to
the sun. Venus is hot because of the greenhouse effect, something
Velikovsky never mentioned. As to the composition of the atmosphere of
Venus, Velikovsky thought it was hydrogen rich with hydrocarbon clouds.
NASA put out an erroneous report in 1963 that said Mariner 2 had found
evidence of hydrocarbon clouds. In 1973 it was determined that the clouds
are made mainly of sulfuric acid particles. Velikovsky was also right
about Jupiter issuing radio emissions, but wrong as to why. He thought it
was because of the electrically charged atmosphere brought on by the
turbulence created by the expulsion of Venus. The radio emissions,
however, are not related to the atmosphere but to "Jupiter's strong
magnetic field and the ions trapped within it" (Morrison 65).

One of the few scientists to criticize Velikovsky's work on scientific
grounds was Carl Sagan (Sagan 1979, 97), who was criticized even by
Velikovsky's opponents for committing
fallacies, making errors, and being intentionally deceptive in his
argumentation. Henry Bauer does not even mention Sagan in his
lengthy entry on Velikovsky in the Encyclopedia of the Paranormal
(Prometheus 1996), unless he is
making an oblique reference to Sagan when he writes about "some sloppy or invalid
technical discussions by critics purporting to disprove Velikovsky's ideas."
Whether Velikovsky's critics were fair-minded or not, there can be no
denying the scientific indifference and incompetence of Velikovsky.
He
seemed satisfied that his study of myths established events which science must explain,
regardless of whether those events clashed with the beliefs of the vast majority of
the scientific community. In this he is like L. Ron Hubbard proposing engrams, which
require cellular memory, while not indicating
that he was aware that such a hypothesis needed to be
explained in light of current scientific knowledge about memory, the brain, etc. Both are
like the so-called "creation scientists" who would create science anew if needed
to justify the truth of their myths.

The essence of Velikovsky's unreasonableness lies in the fact that he does not provide
scientific evidence for his most extravagant claims. His claims are based on assuming cosmological facts must conform to mythology. In general,
he offers no support for the plausibility of his theory beyond an ingenious argument from
comparative mythology. Of course, his scenario is logically possible, in the sense that it
is not self-contradictory. To be scientifically plausible, however, Velikovsky's theory
must provide some compelling reason for accepting it other than the fact that it helps
explain some events described in the Bible or makes Mayan legends fit with Egyptian ones.

Some readers have
been influenced by Velikovsky's defenders who claim he was accurate in some
of his more important claims. For example, Velikovsky
was right that Venus is hot. However, he was wrong in the way he came to
that conclusion. He thought Venus was recently ejected from Jupiter and had
traveled close to the Sun. Neither claim is true. Venus is old and is hot
because of the greenhouse effect, something Velikovsky never mentioned.

Velikovsky thought that the
atmosphere of Venus was hydrogen rich with hydrocarbon clouds. NASA put out
an erroneous report in 1963 that said Mariner 2 had found evidence of
hydrocarbon clouds. In 1973 it was determined that the clouds are made
mainly of sulfuric acid particles.

Velikovsky was also right about
Jupiter issuing radio emissions, but wrong as to why. He thought it was
because of the electrically charged atmosphere brought on by the turbulence
created by the expulsion of Venus. The radio emissions, however, are not
related to the atmosphere but to "Jupiter's strong magnetic field and the
ions trapped within it" (Morrison 65).

For more examples of Velikovsky's
illusory accuracy, I recommend David Morrison's article
"Velikovsky at
Fifty" (Skeptic magazine, vol 9, no 1, 2001).
In response to one version of my comments on Velikovsky, in which I gave him
partial credit for his vision of chaos in the skies, David Morrison wrote
me:

Velikovsky focuses narrowly on encounters
between the Earth and planets -- Mars and Venus. While he refers to Venus
being accompanied by debris, the dominant agents of his catastrophes are
tidal, chemical, and electrical interactions between planets, not
meteoritic impacts. Remarkably, Velikovsky did not even accept (let alone
predict) that the lunar craters are the result of impacts -- rather, he
ascribed them to lava "bubbles" and to electric discharges. I see nothing
in his vision that relates to our current understanding of interplanetary
debris and the role of impacts in geological and biological evolution. I
conclude that Velikovsky was fundamentally wrong in both his vision of
planetary collisions (or near collisions) and in his failure to recognize
the role of smaller impacts and collisions in solar system history.

In his article "Velikovsky at
Fifty," Morrison argues that Velikovsky is given undeserved credit for influencing or being ahead of his time on
the issue of catastrophism. He writes:

In preparing my Skeptic article
"Velikovsky at 50" I corresponded with 25 leading contemporary scientists
who have played a significant role in the development of this "new
catastrophism" to ask what influence, if any, Velikovsky had on their
work. The statements of these scientists indicate that none of them saw
any value in Velikovsky's theories, and that Velikovsky's reputation
sometimes impeded acceptance of their own work, or at least was an
irritant when they described their work to the public. I was also struck
by how easily these scientists (by their own report) rejected Velikovsky.
Note that these are not conservative, ivory-tower academics,
constitutionally prejudiced against new ideas. They have been among the
most creative and revolutionary researchers in their fields. Like all
successful research scientists, however, they are used to making quick
judgments concerning which evidence is more likely to be accurate and
relevant, which research directions more promising. This quick judgment
against Velikovsky by scientists separates these academics from those who
wished (or still wish) to give Velikovsky the benefit of the doubt, to
look for some lasting value in his work.